Blinkit Ventures into Quick Food Delivery with New Service Bistro

Swiggy Ltd has extended its 10-minute food delivery service, Bolt, to more than 400 cities across India. This service focuses on delivering dishes with minimal or no preparation time from a network of over 40,000 participating restaurants, offering a selection of over 10 lakh items. Bolt aims to provide fresh, high-quality food quickly without compromising on taste or safety.  

Initially launched in cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai, and Pune, Bolt now serves emerging hubs such as Jaipur, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Indore, Coimbatore, and Kochi, as well as Tier ll and Tier lll cities like Roorkee, Guntur, Warangal, Patna, Jagtial, Solan, Nashik, and Shillong. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have shown the highest adoption rates for Bolt, followed by states including Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, West Bengal, Rajasthan, and Punjab.  

To optimize the service, Swiggy partners with restaurants to prioritize Bolt orders, focusing on dishes that require minimal preparation time. Delivery partners are assigned orders based on proximity to the Bolt outlets, and the delivery radius is limited to 2 kilometers. Importantly, delivery personnel are not informed whether an order is a Bolt request, and no incentives are offered for speed, ensuring their safety remains a priority.  

Bolt's menu includes popular cuisine categories such as snacks, bakery items, beverages, sweets, ice creams, breakfast options, and biryani. National brands like KFC, McDonald's, Starbucks, Chaayos, and EatFit are part of the lineup, along with regional favorites like Gwalia Sweets in Ahmedabad, Shiraz and Kookie Jar in Kolkata, Karachi Bakery in Hyderabad, MM Mithaiwala in Mumbai, and Bhartiya Jalpan in Bengaluru. In Tier ll cities, notable partners such as Varalakshmi Tiffins in Guntur and Akshay Tiffins in Mangalore report that Bolt now accounts for over 10 percent of their orders.  

Rohit Kapoor, CEO of Swiggy’s Food Marketplace said, “Bolt is changing the way customers are experiencing food. For the first time, people are getting food from their favourite restaurants to their doorstep, as fresh as possible. Idlis come warm and fluffy, ice creams stay frozen, and even fries are crispy right out of the package. With all the customer love we’ve received so far as well as the growing excitement from both national and local restaurants, expanding Bolt was an easy decision. We’re thrilled to bring this experience to even more cities and homes.”  

With Bolt now available in over 400 cities, Swiggy continues to innovate and enhance the food delivery experience. The Bolt section is prominently displayed on the Swiggy app, making it accessible for customers across the country.

India’s leading travel food and retail company, Travel Food Services (TFS), has come up with a new range of ready to eat and drink options at Terminal 1B and 1C of the domestic airport, Mumbai, a new concept ‘Vending Man

These vending men will with the food range be equipped with a Tab and a Bluetooth printer for instant billing and invoicing for the instant billing system.

Inspired by another successful concept by TFS – food@gate, Vending Man has been conceptualised to cater to last minute requirements with its neatly packaged ‘Grab and Go’ options. These vending men are a boon, especially to last minute arrivals and passengers on a busy schedule, who do not have the time to spend at the various outlets. By offering quick and easy access to hot and fresh food, the move promotes the ‘grab and go’ concept for passengers on a busy schedule.

A typical Vending Man would carry a mobile tray with a limited range of best-selling products and will keep moving at the gates. The inaugural menu will have cooler drinks and will soon add munchies and quick bites as well.

“We, at Travel Food Services, are committed to constantly elevating the travel FnB experience in India, and Vending Man is an extension of the same. Considering the volume of travellers and the rush at terminal gates daily, we wanted to create an option for busy passengers to have easy access to quality, freshly packaged, to-go food products. While we are currently testing with two vending men, we plan to increase the number to cater to all kinds of F&B needs of travelers,” said Gaurav Dewan, COO and Business Head, Travel Food Services.

Along with the food and beverage products on offer, a Vending Man will also carry other items like tissues, condiments, and straws. You can find these vending men roaming the gates between 08:00 AM and 10:00 PM daily. Currently available at Mumbai Airport, it is expected to soon expand to other cities across India as well.

Zomato is about to introduce a speedy service feature in its next update for the customers who are ill. The feature, which right now is being tested, will cater to ill customers who’d need food without any delay, on an emergency basis. The announcement comes as Zomato says it crossed the three million monthly orders milestone and is looking to add new meaningful features to get customers to order from its app more frequently. "You will soon be able to tell us that the meal you just ordered is for someone who's a bit under the weather...and we will do everything in our power to expedite your delivery, just so that you can get your chicken clear soup as soon as possible," the company wrote in a blogpost on Thursday.

While the feature will be available for all users, the company will advise users to not misuse it by asking them to treat it like an ambulance. The update will also allow customers to instruct restaurants not to include cutlery (almost always made out of plastic) in their order, thereby, promoting conversation of environment.

Despite this strong growth, the company says its cost of customer acquisition is still negligible, with its restaurant discovery arm still continuing to draw in new customers. In terms of retention, Zomato says that 65 per cent of new users on its platform will order at least once again from it within 12 months.

While reduced competition in India's food-tech space has led to returning sensibilities in terms of discounting, players such as Swiggy, Zomato and FoodPanda still have some way to go before they can turn profitable. For now, the fear is that global giants Uber and Google that have entered the space could kick off another price war.